Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • What is Beautiful

      “The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.” ― Simone Weil, Waiting for God

      Two things I rarely write about are religion and love. The meaning of each is in the eye of the beholder, and the fastest way to divide a room is to carry on too much about either. Even writing that statement will turn off a true believer or two. So be it. We each wrestle with ourselves and our place in this world. Relationships, whether with God or science, your true love or platonic love, are complicated. We’re not on this earth long enough to know everything, but our journey isn’t about the finish, it’s about who we become each step along the way.

      Some people want certainty in their lives. So they only marry someone who believes in the same god, or goes to the same church, or no church. Or maybe it’s politics or nationality or favorite sports team that dictates who they choose to associate with. This is inherently limiting, of course, for it keeps us in a box of our own making. They might as well make it a casket.

      The thing is, we all have our core belief systems and tend to seek out that which reinforces that identity. Over the years I’ve wrestled with strong feelings about everything from musical genres to whether the house lights are left on at night. None of it matters in the long run, it’s just positioning of the self in an indifferent world. Writing every day is the miraculous clarifying tool which brings me closer to understanding it all. Perhaps it is for you too.

      When the year is over, barring some last-minute heroics, I will have read fewer books than last year. And yet the lift is heavier this year, with some significant philosophical works in the mix. This may be my What’s it all about Alfie stage of life, but I think not. I’ve always been this way; I just make better choices now. As you grow you tend to explore your openness to new influences a bit more.

      As sure as I believe there’s a heaven above
      Alfie, I know there’s something much more
      Something even non-believers can believe in
      I believe in love, Alfie
      Without true love we just exist, Alfie
      Until you find the love you’ve missed
      You’re nothing, Alfie
      — Burt Bacharach / Hod David, Alfie

      The world is wrestling with nihilism and division at the moment. It will eventually swing back towards unity, hopefully before too much damage is done. All we can do is be active ambassadors for openness and unity. What is beautiful in our lives may wreck us, but it might also be our salvation. What is life but a journey to discover that which resonates most for us? We reach awareness in our own time, and learn to cherish the experiences and influences that bring us there.

      Whatever the package it comes from, that which is derived from true love and honesty is beautiful. We may learn from it, or turn away from it, but the truth remains. Our obligation to ourselves and the world is to be open. What is beautiful will find its way to us.

    • Uncorking the Day

      “Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”
      — Jean-Paul Sartre

      “You are — your life, and nothing else.”— Jean-Paul Sartre

      There are days that feel bigger than others—weddings and epic vacations quickly come to mind, but really every day is epic for the gift it represents. And being here as we blessedly are to dance with this magnificent day, we ought to celebrate and honor it, as one does with any cherished gift. For this is our moment.

      Sartre is pragmatic and concise in his observation that we are this: Right here, in this moment and in what we’re doing with this gift. We are surely the sum of our days, for they carried us here, but yesterday was taken away from us like empty wine bottles on recycling day. Appreciate them, but focus on uncorking this moment and all it offers.

      Cheers!

    • Schemes and Dreams

      “A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
      From time to time my heart is like some oak
      Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.”
      — Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works

      We all dream of things beyond the scope of our present situation. It’s human nature to dream, and we tend to collect dreams like books waiting to be read. How many books can we read in a lifetime? When you think of your average, it’s a surprisingly short number. So it is with dreams: we may dream an unlimited number, but accomplish but a few. We ought to make them our favorites.

      Dreams are evasive distractions until we start working towards them. Dreaming is unproductive on its own, for we must scheme as well. Without a plan, we risk walking in circles. Or maybe we dance in circles, happy in our own little world, content to linger with our dream. But we humans like to scheme too, and soon we’re dreaming of the next mountain to climb.

      Schemes and dreams pair well together in this way. But we’ve all experienced moments where we’re forever planning our next big move, but never actually beginning the climb. Excessive planning is procrastination. Dreams and schemes are just a dance without action.

      We tend to think we’ll be productive and get things done in good time. But great ideas don’t transform themselves into completed work, the muse just chooses a different author willing to dance long enough to make it real. That trip of a lifetime likewise doesn’t happen on it’s own. We must do the work to realize our dreams, or they’ll simply dance with someone else.

    • Forever Working Towards Arete

      “Homer’s epic poems brought into focus a notion of arete, or excellence in life, that was at the center of the Greek understanding of human being…. Excellence in the Greek sense involves neither the Christian notion of humility and love nor the Roman ideal of stoic adherence to one’s duty. Instead, excellence in the Homeric world depends crucially on one’s sense of gratitude and wonder. …. the Greek word arete is etymologically related to the Greek verb “to pray” (araomai). It follows that Homer’s basic account of human excellence involves the necessity of being in an appropriate relationship to whatever is understood to be sacred in the culture.” — Hubert Drefus, All Things Shining

      My first memory of hearing the word arete was when a history professor I was quite fond of suggested we use it as the name of a new rowing shell our crew had acquired. The Greek word for excellence seemed as worthy a name as any to aspire to, and so I proposed it. The rowing coach, never one to embrace such things, chose a different name. And it turned out that we never did quite achieve excellence, settling somewhere into better than average. I wonder if we’d chosen it we might have been inclined to be so? One can’t very well name a rowing shell Arete and finish in the middle of the pack.

      What’s become clear to me over the years since that first encounter with arete is that it’s been my objective ever since. We reach, fall short, move a step closer and reach again. That’s how we move forward towards something greater than our previous self. Living with a sense of gratitude and wonder, embracing that which is sacred, and working towards excellence is a blueprint for a lifetime.

      We can’t control everything in life. Surely things happen along the way that may be chocked up to luck, timing or serendipity. But certainly, what we aspire to makes all the difference in how full our lives turn out to be.

    • The Big Reveal

      “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” – Muhammad Ali

      “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

      Is courage the leap into the unknown or the perseverance and grit to see it through? I think Muhammad Ali would add that courage requires more of us than simply stepping into the ring, it’s taking the punches and standing up again round-after-round. We all have our own ring to step into, filled with work, family, relationships, fitness goals, writing goals, getting-through-the-day goals.

      What are we prioritizing and what do we let slip away? Isn’t it just as courageous to say no as it is to say yes to something? Perhaps more so? Which does beg the question: What are we really trying to accomplish in our brief time here?

      A long and rewarding career? Wrestling a career from the ground up is a grind, filled with moments of sacrifice and tactics, honor and betrayal, tedium and tenure. How we play it determines just how long and rewarding it turns out to be. Maybe we also prioritize building a strong nest and raising a family. It takes courage simply to have children, especially for the mother, but also courage to stay in the game for the long haul—raising them to be strong advocates for decency and hope.

      Just what do we lean into for the long haul? Comfort? Adventure? Can you be comfortable when you seek adventure? Perhaps, but isn’t it a different kind of comfort than the comfort the person who seeks comfort seeks? Every climb requires discomfort. Every leaper must bear the impact of the landing before leaping again. Discomfort is what we pay now for comfort later. Conversely, comfort now tends to make later more discomfortable. We each must pay our dues in life to get to the place we want to be. Life takes time and courage to see it through.

      The neighbors through the woods had a large shed built last year during the summer months. My bride and I debated just what they were building as it seemingly took all summer to complete the work. She said that whatever it was, we’d have the big reveal when the leaves dropped in the fall and everything would become obvious. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.

      It’s worth asking ourselves every time we stand up in our own ring, why am I doing this? For there’s no long-term courage without a compelling purpose. Sometimes the answers are obvious, and sometimes we have to wait for our own big reveal, when the seasons change and the things that were most important all along become apparent. Often, courage is staying the course long enough to find out.

    • Old Souls and Young Hearts

      When we come across young people who exhibit a level of maturity beyond their years, we often describe them as having old souls. Many of us believe that the job of parents is to raise children to be old souls from as young an age as possible. Teaching life skills that will carry them a long way in life is the obvious primary mission, but also critical is to avoid leaving as much of our own personal baggage on their shoulders as possible. The best parents are both instructive and inclusive with children. When they feel a part of the conversation, they feel enabled and drawn into the world. When they’re constantly berated and corrected by parents, they feel inadequate and diminished. Thus old souls are formed by inclusive parenting.

      Young hearts think in possibility, take leaps of faith, seek adventure and break rules. Certainly many young people have a young heart, but many don’t. Just so, there are many old people with young hearts too. It’s an exclusive club, revealed with a secret handshake and a twinkle in the eye—you know the young at heart when you encounter them in the wild. And if you’re inclined to do things that others feel aren’t appropriate for your age and status, well, you might have a young heart too.

      To get anything done in this world, we must have a healthy combination of old soul and young heart: Maturity and insight mixed with the Moxie to just do it already. Old souls with young hearts make the world go round. Inventors and pioneers, musicians and poets, fighter pilots and social leaders who dare shake up the status quo, all have the right stuff. Bold, but not reckless, they seek expression in their chosen craft.

      We forget, sometimes, that older people with young hearts get a lot of things done too. We can accomplish so much more as we get some momentum behind us if we choose to pursue our own passions. Age is simply a number—it’s fitness, health and vibrancy that fuel the fire, whether you’re 23 or 103 or somewhere in between. If we’re lucky and blessed with enough runway, forward propulsion and lift, we just might soar. Life is best lived with an old soul and a young heart.

    • Autumn Whispers

      Well, the leaves have come to turning
      And the goose has gone to fly
      And bridges are for burning
      So don’t you let that yearning
      Pass you by
      — James Taylor, Walking Man

      If life is a collection of experiences, surely autumn is one of the grandest of them all. I favor off-season for the stillness it offers, and generally avoid the lines of tourists making their pilgrimages to places famous for both beauty and popularity. But some things must be done. If you want to see the cherry blossoms in bloom, you must go visit places like Japan or Washington DC in spring when they’re doing just that. And so it is with fall foliage in New England. When it arrives, you must step out and greet it before the leaves literally fall away.

      We aren’t here to let life pass us by. We’re here to embrace the seasons, and make the most of our time. It autumn tells us anything, it’s that life quickly flies past us when we patiently wait our turn. Remember that old expression that the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time to plant a tree is today? So it is with actively living. We must grow into a full life from the moment we resolve to do so.

      Don’t let that yearning pass you by.

    • A Better Direction

      “Quitting, for me, means not giving up, but moving on; changing direction not because something doesn’t agree with you, but because you don’t agree with something. It’s not a complaint, in other words, but a positive choice, and not a stop in one’s journey, but a step in a better direction. Quitting–whether a job or a habit–means taking a turn so as to be sure you’re still moving in the direction of your highest dreams.” — Pico Iyer, “Quit Pro Quotes”, Utne Reader, Sept./Oct. 1996

      We all have moments when we contemplate quitting and doing something else with our brief time. What stops us? Persistence? Faith in the future we’re building? Or is a sense of obligation? We slide into lethargic habits built over time and don’t see that there may be another way. I used to call this an attractive rut that one could easily stay in until the end of time. Maybe having a drink every day at 5 PM is the proper response for a long day of work, or maybe simply walking until you forget what your troubles were does it. Then again, maybe the proper response is to quit altogether the life built around what we believe to be all there is in our world. The answer is different for each of us, but the way we react when someone suggests quitting something deeply ingrained within our identity is telling, isn’t it?

      When you read the word ingrained, did you immediately think of the spelling? I often debate internally whether to use ingrained or engrained when I write it, which says as much about me as anything I suppose. But the point is, we all have traits and defaults within us that seem natural (like obsessing over the right way to use a word that 99% of the world won’t give a thought to). Whether those traits and defaults are productive or detrimental to our progress is a question worth asking ourselves now and then.

      I encourage you to either click the link to read the rest of Iyer’s thoughts on quitting, or Googling the article if you’re rightfully suspicious of clicking links random bloggers throw at you (although you can trust this random blogger—I promise). There’s magic in Iyer’s words, as there usually is, and they may change you profoundly, as they have me even as I write this. The quote above is easily found (Rolf Potts points to it often), but, as with any quote, mining deeper into the place it was drawn from offers so much more. For me, Iyer landed a knockout punch with this nugget:

      “Continuing the job would represent an invisible kind of quitting–an abdication of possibility–and would leave me with live unlived that I would one day, and too late, regret”.

      Don’t read this as a public admission that I’m quitting my job anytime soon, but a spotlight on the key message here: we all abdicate possibility that we will one day regret if we don’t go for it immediately. For now is all we have, and there’s living unlived to get to. See the world. Write the book. Hike that mountain. Sail to that faraway destination. Ask the question. Take the chance…. LIVE.

    • Staying Out of the Traps

      “In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

      “To enjoy the full flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.” — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

      We all walk the line between being active producers and active consumers. As with everything, there’s a balance between the two to have a full life. The world, as it pleases, fills us up with things to do. We actively participate or we step off the production line and dance to our own beat, but we aren’t machines, and even the most productive among us need to consume to refuel and recharge.

      Then again, we see plenty of examples of people over-consuming and not getting anything done in their lives. And surely in this world there’s plenty to consume: food, opinion, trivial pursuits, time. We ought to ask, when consumption is tipping the scales, “just where is this taking me?” But sometimes, as Elvis put it, we get caught in a trap we can’t walk out of. Surely, we must steer clear of the traps.

      I think a lot about the two Heinlein quotes above. I’ve been saving them for some time now, thinking each would stand on their own in a blog post, but they also pair well together. Each highlights this wrestling match called living. We want to have clear purpose and a mission we believe in, for humans are meant to produce something of consequence in our brief time. And we want to be bold and see the world—making the most of this brief time with the sensory experiences that make life worth living in the first place.

      The thing is, we know when things are in balance, just as we know when something is off. The absence of clear purpose makes us “a slave to the man”, as a friend puts it. Put another way, if we aren’t working on our own goals, someone else will gladly give us theirs to work on. We must actively pursue that which has meaning for us, and steadily move away from daily trivia.

      What do we have an appetite for? Decide what to be and go be it. We tend to think small in our days, while forgetting what’s possible over a lifetime. Perhaps too many big bites will give us indigestion, but too few will leave us starving for more. As with everything, balance is the key, but don’t get caught in the trap of thinking small.

      I recognize that this post featured a lot of paraphrased quotes. It was simply me processing each in real time. Thanks for sticking with me on this one. Go be it. I’ll work to do the same.

    • Changes, In the Wind

      Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
      where everything shines as it disappears.
      The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
      as the curve of the body as it turns away.
      What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
      Is it safer to be gray and numb?
      What turns hard becomes rigid
      and is easily shattered.
      Pour yourself out like a fountain.
      Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
      finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.
      Every happiness is the child of a separation
      it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
      dares you to become the wind.
      — Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII

      Changes come to us in our own time, but often we grow comfortable in our own sameness. For meaningful change to happen we must step away from ourselves and become something else—something different, something more. Which way to go? It hardly matters at first, for we must break the comfortable spell we find ourselves in before we might finally see what’s available to us.

      The thing is, change takes many forms. Some people emphatically sail away from it all to see the world, while for other people change takes shape in less obvious ways. The pace of change is different for each of us. But we’re changing nonetheless. Like a sailor waiting for a weather window, we don’t always control the pace of change, but we may yet arrive if we keep working towards our objective. Put another way, we must have agency over our own transformation to live a full and rewarding life, while recognizing we aren’t on this journey alone.

      Yet it remains true that we must be the arsonist to our old self. Change begins with the spark of inspiration, kindled into a flame, that grows into a signal fire. We grow into ourselves one step at a time. As Rilke says so beautifully; “Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not thing it could survive”. We are aware of the changes happening within us and around us—do we shrink into our shell at such moments or embrace it? Life in every moment is a reckoning between who we believe ourselves to be and the person we wish to become.

      Dare to be it.